Dale Jenkins and a myriad of other preachers and teachers are doing a series called The Minister and Money this month, with #11 of 11 being published this morning by Matthew Hiatt.
How did I miss this?
Usually, I don't use exclamation points, but this actually warrants one. Because I'm really excited to launch my new set of resource pages here on the site.
Starting today I'm offering over 30 free downloadable text files of sermons, classes, and devotionals. The sermons are full-length and full-text, because that's how I write out my sermons. These sermon lengths can range from 20-40 minutes. Classes are your standard 40-minute classes, mostly for teens, although the content will be applicable across age groups. These are a mix of full-text and bullet points with scriptures, illustrations, and sometimes even games. The devotionals are short, 5-minute thoughts that I do usually twice a month here where I work on Wednesday nights. They're full-text as well.
I'm not charging for any of this content, because 1) I believe the Gospel is free and these resources try to teach that Gospel, so they should also be free, and 2) with the exception of personal stories and illustrations, I claim no original content here. In fact, most of these illustrations and lessons you've probably heard before. When I take an idea from someone else's writings, thoughts, or words, I cite it. So I claim no original thoughts here, just some good content that I felt I did not need to keep to myself.
Most files are in plain text (.txt) format for your connivence. This makes incredibly small files that are easy to download and open and lets you put your own formatting on them if you wish. The text files will open in any text editor, internet browser, or word processor, making them very universal.
I only have two prerequisites to using the material and content provided: 1) DO NOT use this stuff without further study of your own. This material is meant to help you in your ministry, not replace your study. 2) If anyone wishes to use this content in a publication, either printed or otherwise, I request to be contacted for it's use.
Take a look at those resource pages and let me know what you think. More resources will be added every week, so keep checking back. Eventually I'll have a library of resources at your fingertips.
May God bless you and the use of these materials in your ministry and study.
Classes
Devotionals
Sermons
Our group is a week behind on starting the Hashtag Youth Video series, but nevertheless, we will begin our 13-week journey through this excellent video series this evening.
My question to you is: Why aren't you using it?
It's free. Can't argue with free.
Content is Christ-centered. Everything said in each of the videos is specifically designed to excite teenagers about Jesus Christ and His message.
It's high-quality. Videos were shot in high-definition. Daniel Howell has done an excellent job making these video look like something you would pay hundreds of dollars for.
Teens from around the world are participating. Did you know that over twelve thousand people watched the video series from 2012?
The speakers are top-notch. We had some incredible speakers last year, but this year that's been elevated another notch.
It's free. Did I mention it's FREE?
The Hashtag Video Series is supported by the excellent Hashtag Media, and they sell all sorts of class content, retreat and summer camp themes, and many other things.
Check out the Vimeo page to view and download videos. The videos on Vimeo are available in standard and high definition.
The video series also has its own website at Hashtag13.com.
Use this excellent video resource today, get your kids thinking and identifying with Christ, and support this valuable work in God's Kingdom.
Ever since the "big" iPad debuted in 2010, I'm sure that there were a ton of posts (and probably still are) that the iPad was the ultimate tool for preaching and teaching.
But I haven't read any of those articles, because for a long time, I didn't have an iPad. In 2012, I picked up an iPad, my wife and son fell in love with it, so I used that excuse to get an iPad mini.
I love the smaller form factor. I love that its the size of my Bible. I love that the screen is the same resolution as the iPad 2, except packed into a smaller size.
And I haven't used paper ever since.
My iPad mini coupled with my Bible is all I need to teach a full-length class or preach a standard 30-minute sermon. I've went through many different workflows to perfect my process. And I'd love to share it with you.
PDF to Dropbox
My first workflow with the iPad involved me styling a pretty document in Pages on the Mac and exporting it to PDF to a specified folder in my Dropbox. With it there, I could use a variety of apps (including the Dropbox app itself) to view the PDF for teaching my class.
This was a clunky solution. Although pretty, the PDF wasn't editable. I couldn't add or delete content on the go, I would have to open the original document, edit it, re-export the PDF, and sync the changes across my devices. I grew tired of this workflow very quickly.
Evernote
The second app/workflow I tried was Evernote. Evernote is an excellent all-capture app for things such as text, photos, and even audio. For a while this worked - I was able to write my class notes in the Evernote app for Mac, and after a few seconds the changes would sync to my devices. The problem here though is that I had a WiFi-only iPad mini. Unless the notes are cached and ready to go, it's not possible to pull them up on the go unless you have tethering to your smartphone. (You also run into roadblocks with this in almost every other syncing method, by the way.)
Had I stuck with my Nexus 7 and with Android, I would have stuck with Evernote, and I probably would have been happy.
Simplenote
Very similar to Evernote in my opinion, except Simplenote is just for text. There's a couple of ways you could compose your material - through the very nice Simplenote interface on the web or through a number of apps such as Brett Terpstra's NV Alt, or with the dedicated iPhone and iPad apps. I didn't have too good of luck with Simplenote, despite loving the service, because I'm a bit too organized for it. Simplenote maintains that you should organize through a tagging system, and while I love tags, I had no need for it in my folder-by-month file structure for all my class and sermon notes.
Simplenote is excellent for quick notes, and will even sync via my beloved Drafts app, but that's all I currently use it for.
.txt to Elements in Dropbox
My current workflow my not seem as simple as some of the others, but it allows me the most flexibility and is, in fact, incredibly simple and automated. I was hesitant to implement this workflow because I thought it may be too complicated, but it turns out that it's right the opposite.
I compose my lessons in TextEdit on the Mac (or any other text editor that will save as or export to .txt format) and simply save them into the appropriate sub folder in my Elements folder, which is housed in my main Dropbox folder. Writing in plain text (.txt) allows lots of flexibility - namely file size, transfer times, and the ability to edit pretty much anywhere.
I use the Elements app on my iPad to display my material to teach my classes. Elements will cache that folder's contents on wifi and will allow you pull up the latest version even if the app hasn't connected for a while. If you make changes though, you will have to refresh the file list. But on wifi and even over cell phone signal, this is incredibly quick considering file sizes are a tenth of the size of Pages or Word files. The app will also allow you to create a new text file in the file directory that you wish and will sync that file with Dropbox once a connection becomes available again.
Elements does allow limited styling of your text through Markdown. If you don't know what Markdown is, it's just a neat HTML-like way to style plain text, with headline sizes, bold, italics, and bullet points. Elements will also allow you to change font sizes as well as pick from many nice fonts to display your text.
This current workflow seems to be working, because I haven't changed it in the last 12 months.
I love my iPad and I love the flexibility it gives me to edit my lessons on the go and compose them wherever I want. With 3 apps - Elements, Dropbox, and Drafts - I control my own creativity when and where I want to edit and create new thoughts.
What about you? What do you use when you preach or teach?
Disclaimer: I am one of the fortunate youth ministers to be able to work with a great staff and wonderful elders who respect our job titles and let us focus on what we were hired and trained to do. So this rant isn't about me, but rather what I've observed and continue to observe churches doing to discourage and burn out youth ministers.
<rant>
Look, churches. Elderships. Leaderships. PLEASE listen.
I'm so sick of seeing friends drop out of ministry. Good friends who were good ministers who were doing God's work to help young people and their parents get to heaven and they drop out of ministry just because they can't take any more bellyaching. Goodness. Youth Ministers are people too. We're people who make mistakes and have families and hobbies and go on vacations (when we can afford it and we're not paying off students loans). We have feelings too, so stop making out like we don't by talking behind our backs or better yet, publicly speaking out against us.
Who did you hire? A youth minister or a superhero? We can only do so much. We make half what pulpit ministers make and do the same amount of more, maybe more in the summer. We do the same amount of the work because you're constantly piling stuff on for us to do. We're not just the youth minister, we're the education director, tech support, website administrator, song leader, part-time "associate" minister, children's program director, class teacher on Sundays and Wednesdays, VBS coordinator, Summer Camp coordinator, DayCamp coordinator, and a couple of other things that we forgot about because we're trying to get all the other stuff done. So who did you hire and why don't you let me do what I was trained to do, and what I'm best at instead of piling everything up on me until I quit?
And another thing: I'm not the savior of your kids, Jesus is. I'm not the leader of your children's lives, their parents are. I can only, at most, be a guide. I can teach kids thoughtful lessons that I spend hours preparing. I can plan fun events and and do fun things with them and magnify Christ in those things. I can have discussions with parents and teens about how to work through problems.
What I can't do is everything. I can't teach on Sunday morning, preach that same morning, do a devotional for the older people that Sunday afternoon, lead singing that Sunday night and do a devotional for the kids afterwards. I am not Carl Lewis. I cannot do everything. And when you try to put everything on me, it's just going to burn me out and make me resent ministry, and maybe even the church.
Elders, Leaders, parents: LISTEN. When you are looking to hire me, do not look at me as your workhorse, look at me as your partner to help your kids get to heaven. Treat me as a person, not a robot.
</rant>